App Store Optimization (ASO)

The best word that describes businesses nowadays is “dynamic”. Users are bombarded with thousands of messages on a daily basis and this is why their attention span has significantly diminished. This creates a bottleneck for businesses, as each one of them strives to gain a competitive advantage by conveying their message in a better manner compared to others. This is why marketing is so vital nowadays in order for a business to position itself better in customers’ eyes.

Thus, there are many forms of marketing. For the sake of simplicity, let’s divide the field into two distinguishable segments: paid marketing and organic marketing. As the former field is straightforward and speaks for itself through paid ads, let’s focus on the latter. It is to no surprise that the ultimate goal of marketers is to receive traction and social growth in an organic and cost-effective manner. Therefore, the best way to achieve this is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and App Store Optimization (ASO).

SEO is the practice of organically improving your website’s visibility on search engines for given keywords. ASO, on the other hand, is the expert resource through which one can enhance the ranking of their application directly within app stores.

In this article, we’re going to focus on App Store Optimization. More specifically, we’re going to cover:

We can help you.

What is an App Store Optimization?

An app store optimization, simply put, is the practice of improving your app’s visibility on app stores such as iOS, Google Play, Windows Store, etc. It is the SEO version of applications.

ASO also boosts the conversion app stores impressions by turning them into downloads (one method is through A/B testing, for example). Although the goal of the app store optimization is an increased number of downloads, supplemental aims include:

Audience Engagement

Enhanced brand recognition & exposure

Positive app reviews and constructive feedback

Succeeding in being an additional (and diversified) marketing channel

Community building

And last but not least, increasing the revenue

Benefits of implementing an ASO

Having an ASO is a decision entirely up to you. But if you want to be competitive in this market and to improve your AppStore ranking, you might need one. Heck, you need one. Especially today.

According to recent statistics, there is a drastic push and demand in terms of app downloads with regards to the last two years. By comparing this radical increase in app downloads and mobile phone usage to the slight diminishment of social media presence, we can easily conclude one thing: If one is to stay above the threshold and to preserve their competitive advantage, doing ASO on a regular basis is highly recommended and is a tactic you should prioritize.

If you’re still not convinced, maybe the following benefits will change your mind:

Organic Installs and, thus, lower acquisition costs – if you implement the right positioning strategy, your app will score better. This, in turn, will lead to an increase in organic downloads, while keeping your acquisition costs down.

Guaranteed ROI and increased revenue – if you monetize your app accordingly (subscriptions, in-app purchases, ads, etc.), then the ASO will increase your ROI as you’ll be earning from each additional user download.

Long-term stability, loyalty, and brand recognition – by ranking higher, more people will be familiarized with your brand. This will turn them into loyal customers and for you, that means long-term stability on the market and reduced entry barriers if you’re introducing another app later on.

Convinced now? Great! Let’s move on to some of some great practical examples!

Best practices and examples

Having figured out what an ASO is and its associated benefits, let’s review some examples which turned out to be pretty effective:

1. Airbnb – the internationally-renowned short-term rental business got it right. They effectively summarized their unique value proposition and competitive advantage in the first two pictures of its app. This is enough to hook their desired audience into installing the app and becoming members of their community. By doing a successful merge between keywords usage and visual appearance, Airbnb’s ASO simply enhanced their market share.

2. Snapchat – who hasn’t heard of Snapchat? Well, there’s a reason for this preeminence. The application started as a regular story- sharing platform for teenagers to have fun and share moments together. However, it owes its drastic success to app-store optimization, by pointing out its key factors which discern it, along with carefully analyzing its target audience and tailoring well-thought keywords.

3. Shazam – no, not the DC superhero, but rather the music-tracking application. As a market leader in this sphere, Shazam has optimized its visibility to the extent that it pops out on the top when the word “music” is involved.

How to ASO

You might be wondering “Ok, I definitely need an ASO for my app… But how can I improve my AppStore ranking? How to ASO?!”

If you want your app to rank higher in the AppStore, there are a couple of steps which need to be considered:

1. Find the right app store keywords through detailed research

Analyze and study your target market

Choose specific keyword ideas based on your market’s preferences

Optimize your App Store Keywords. You should select approximately 25 app store keywords for the next release of the app.

2. Place the right app store keywords in the right places

Name of the App – choose both creative and a searchable option so that your app can score higher through the engine algorithm. Example: “Google Maps – GPS Navigation”

In-App Purchases (IAP) – again, in order for your app to score higher on search engines and to get better exposure, be creative and include searchable app store keywords in the names of your IAP items.

Icon of the app – the better, the merrier. According to SplitMetrics, a good icon can increase the number of downloads by 560%. Keep it simple, eye-catching, and applicable to your target market. Make it substantially different from your competitors’.

Pictures/screenshots – It is important to place your best pictures first, as people won’t bother to swipe after the second one. This is why you must put the most eye-catching pictures first, in order to increase the possibility of a higher conversion rate. A good idea is to keep them vertical, if possible, as this is the usual position of users’ phones while browsing.

A preview video – although it may be time-consuming and costly, a video is a huge gamechanger, as it resigns in users’ attention span longer and will certainly give you a competitive advantage when applied right. Its aim is to grab immediately the attention of viewers, to make sense even if the sound is off, to focus only on the best app features, and should include a call-to-action conclusion.

Reviews – Always provide your users with a 24/7 response rate, in order to increase your customer support. A good idea is to implement a Net Promoter Score (NPS), in order to track how much people fancy your app.

App size – try not to exceed 150 MB. Sometimes less is more.

Update frequency – the app search engine algorithm tends to value more apps which often update their information. Try doing it once/month, at least.

However, even if it sounds simple at first glance, it is not. It takes a lot of research and struggles in order to be executed properly and that’s still not an indicator that it will be successful. Simply put, doing an effective SEO/ASO isn’t for anyone.

Nevertheless, there are many specialized marketing agencies out there, which focus specifically on conducting such effective strategies for their clients. Such an example is our agency, Hawaras.

Why Hawaras?

During our journey to helping clients score better on app store search engines, we’ve encountered many promising apps which only needed a slight push. Thus, by successfully doing ASO for them through the help of the aforementioned techniques and by improving both user metrics and App metrics, our clients were delighted with the results. Not only this, but they also understood the importance of organic growth hacking services, such as app store optimization.

Orbis – A geosocial network for mapping society. As much as the app held its competitive advantage unique, their presence on app stores was weak. Therefore, we did a thorough German ASO strategy for them, including keyword marketing research, well-composed title, headline, and body embedded with keywords, and an exhaustive competitive analysis through benchmarking. The CEO was extremely satisfied, as her ranking and traffic have significantly enhanced organically since then.

Tonestro– the #1 wind music application which provides users with the opportunity to improve, have fun, and save cash from private lessons. As a developing app, it needed awareness and brand recognition, in order to maximize revenue through its business model. Therefore, we, from Hawaras, successfully conducted a comprehensive app search optimization strategy for the musical app. It involved all the aforementioned steps, such as analyzing the sole market, applying a SWOT analysis, researching highly visible applicable keywords, applying them in the title, the description, and in the IAP. Last but not least, we utilized the icon of the app, the pictures, and the review section. Simply put, we started from scratch but managed to skyrocket tonestro’s visibility through our ASO strategy.

MyGrams – MyGrams is a developing business in Austria. It produces a small portable scale capable of measuring one’s calories, thus, being the best diet assistant ever. The way it functions is through an app. And this is where we came useful – same as in tonestro’s case, the sole spectrum of an ASO analysis and utilization had to be executed, both in German and in English. Nevertheless, our efforts came to be successful, as the MyGrams’ CEO, Daniel Blumer, was more than satisfied with the quality of our work and with the improved visibility we got from app stores.

Night Mode – was another client of ours. The app’s representative, Nikola Radenkovic, requested a thorough keyword research, and an app store optimization through improving the title and the descriptions with specific keywords with high visibility. After delivering our work within the time scope, Mr. Radenkovic was beyond satisfied as he received a 15% upgrade in downloads within the first week after executing our ASO campaign.

The fact that each one of us is highly certified and experienced in this field … and ….

Our undying eagerness to never sacrifice quality for quantity.

Takeaways

This was a lot of information, wasn’t it? Let’s try to point out the main takeaways from it.

ASO is a technique to organically increase your app’s visibility. Just like the SEO, it functions on the basis of specific keywords aimed at targeting your specific market audience.

It is a must to consider it for your app if you want to score better, to increase your market share, ROI, and to build a stronger and better brand on the market.

However, doing this entirely on your own might be an issue. It is a painful and obscure process which requires a lot of dedication, hard work, and sleepless nights. So why not let a professional take care of that while you’re focusing on tasks with a higher priority? This is why we, from Hawaras, are eager to help you improve your app search score in no time by applying our 360-degree ASO techniques.

Why reinvent the wheel when you can just realign it? Why struggle with all these steps when you can focus on other tasks and let us improve the ranking of your app for you.

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Nikola Krastev

Office Manager and Social Media Management

Nikola is the office manager of Hawaras, while studying for his bachelor’s degree in automobile technology, which substantially enhances his multitasking skills. His previous experience in retail coordination and ability to deliver exceptional customer support and value to clients only contributes to his hard-working nature and impeccable quality of the end results. Mixing these with his friendly personality, Niky Krastev is a must for the existence of the productive atmosphere in the office.

Philip Dimitrov

Chief Executive Officer

Philip is the CEO of Hawaras. He’s currently finishing up his Masters Degree in technical mathematics from the Vienna University of Technology. Additionally, he has finished his 1.5 year-long Diploma Supplement on Innovation at the Innovation Incubation Center (i²c) TU Vienna. The intra- and entrepreneurship skills acquired there flow in startups within the Hawaras Group. Previously worked at ATOS, Erste Bank Group, and OMV, and is also adroit in the blockchain field.

Nikola Savov

Social Media Strategist

Other than being extremely hard-working, vibrant, and modest, Nikola has had experience in the field of IT, customer support, marketing, and Blockchain. Since he joined Hawaras, he has worked on enhancing the awareness about several of our clients through social media planning, strategic management, and dedicated 24/7 efforts. A person to cheer you up, a co-worker to rely on.

Piotr Zlatovcen

Russian Marketing

Piotr is our specialist in the field of Russian Marketing. Communication with people brings him joy. Thus, he rejoices when he learns something new, especially in the marketing sphere. Analytical thinking is one of its strongest features that, along with stubbornness, often leads to impeccable results and met KPI’s. Young, communicative, motivated, and an incredible ice-breaker in times of tension.

Plamena Panayotova

Designer

Plamena’s interests lie within graphic and web design, along with enthusiasm in professional photography and impeccable attention to details. She takes pride in her graphic designs and visuals, therefore, quality exceeds quantity, professionalism surpasses mediocrity. Plamena’s past experiences include a Graphic and Web Design Internship in a leading digitally-driven creative agency, projects for university classes, solo/freelance projects for friends/clients, and NGOs/causes she cares for.

Kaloyan Fazli

Technical Service Representative

Kaloyan Fazli is a young and passionate community builder with an entrepreneurial mindset. In the past few years, Kaloyan has turned his eyes towards the emerging blockchain field, including cryptocurrencies. Consequently, he’s been helping multiple companies, and blockchain communities to grow through the help of implementing marketing strategies, effectively building the community around a brand, and contributing to the design field, or more specifically, front-end developing.

Marios Pittas

Designer

An adroit professional in the field of UI and graphic design. Marios is keen on the fast-paced development of technology, thus, he also specialized in tech services, in order to be prepared and to have a competitive market advantage in 20-30 years. An impeccable front-end developer by expertise and a creative graphic designer by heart would describe Marios Pittas.

Rahul Nambiampurath

Adroit Digital – Marketing

Rahul is an India-based Digital Marketer who got attracted to Bitcoin and Blockchain in 2014. Ever since he’s been an active member of the community. He’s an adroit digital marketer who enhances the awareness and renown of various projects through effective implementation of paid advertisement on some of the most ubiquitous media vehicles. Other than that he is a die-hard gamer. This gadget freak is well-renowned in his circle for binge-watching Game of Thrones.

Gergana Shehtova

Designer

Gery is the illustrator and animator in the team. Her degree in animation cinema and background in visual art gives her the ability and grasp of creating concepts and designs. Gergana is a passionate and hard-working artist with a detail-oriented personality.

Ivan Dimitrov

Sales

A passionate marketer and salesperson with a keen interest in project management. Ivan is the bridge between impulsiveness and scrutiny as he’s both an extrovert and an introvert, making him an exclusive critical thinker, especially when it comes to idea generation, marketing research, public speaking, and executing tasks. Mixing these abilities with his outgoing personality and team-player spirit, Ivan is a truly valuable asset for Hawaras. He has over than three years of marketing & sales experience from working at sharingXchange, Veda Ltd., Vaptech, and from various freelancing activities.

Gabriel Dumet

Editor

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Kaloyan Ivanov

Executive Assistant – Marketing

As a graduate from the American University in Bulgaria, Kaloyan has worked in several industries,including finances, marketing, and management. He has managerial skills acquired from running a small construction business on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Later on he went back to Bulgaria and worked as a business banker until he met Philip Dimitrov and eventually began work in his newly formed StartUp as a marketing representative and then – as a project manager.

Philip Dimitrov

Chief Technology Officer

Has a Masters Degree in Visual Computing from the Vienna University of Technology. Philipp has already gathered experience in the startup scene by working in Visionlabs. Also, he was one of the organizers of the Ethereum meetup in Moscow. Being both an excellent CTO and an incredible salesperson is what discerns Philipp from the rest CTO’s.

Alexander Dimitrov

Chief Design Officer

Alex is our head designer and content lead at CM Services and Hawaras. These responsibilities include the visual representation of the company’s logo, brand, and web design. Furthermore, Alex is fulfilling design needs for the company’s clients all over the world, as well as generating new ideas and future initiatives. He tackles graphic design as impeccably as the contemporary market demands it.

Vasil Dimitrov

Chief Financial Officer

As Vasil put it: “It’s never too late to start something new from the beginning if you have the courage, analytical thinking, and the necessary skills.” These words depict him at his finest – a graduated economist with 18 years IT Consulting experience in different industry sectors. Currently, he’s leading the Human Resources role in Hawaras and is managing the vital internal communications inside the team along with bolstering their motivation.

Kevin Benckendorf

Chief Marketing Officer

With years of experience in the startup ecosystem, Kevin, our CMO, is responsible for Hawaras’ global brand and makes sure that all marketing activities stay connected and integrated. His goal is generating leads and growing the audience and community of each Project while simultaneously solving other unique digital marketing challenges.